Time for a general update, you lot. I'll go over the bullet points and then elaborate after, for the sake of folks inclined to brevity:

Keep an eye peeled for streams over the next few days! Planning to try for a sketch stream this weekend (hopefully for reals this time), possibly Friday?

No page tonight; the next one's a double, though.

Trying for a new work schedule, which is part of the delay but should yield long-term upsides if I can manage it.

Also trying to manage stress of our housing situation, which Kazziepones elaborates on here, and if you want to help with this hogwash she started a GoFundMe here.

That's the shortlist!

Okay, so here's the long version:

I'm trying to get my work schedule altered to four longer days as opposed to five shorter ones, since I rarely get much of note done on weeknights as it is anyway. I'm hoping this'll help me balance my personal work and open up more streaming opportunities for you guys to come and hang out and maybe sometimes get a sketch or two, because that's something that I enjoy doing that also just kinda helps me out both financially and with inflating my own lacking ego. Hooray! For now, though, it's going to help us out with house hunting.

We got a notice at the start of the month that our apartments' corporate overlords want to boot us out, renovate, and turn the place around for something like a 50% rent hike they can't legally lay on us. More tactfully, or really as they put it directly, they don't wish to renew our lease, which is up in December, giving us something like a month to find a new place, move to that new place, still pay the rent where we are but also the rent and deposit and such where we're going, and somehow in the middle of this remember Christmas is at the same time and manage to not get sad about it. (No promises on managing all of that.)

We've had some offers of help from family and friends, and we also don't have a hard number for costs until we figure out where we're even going, which is really hard to do when you work 9 to 5 on weekdays, need those hours to get by, and oops also that's the only time your prospective new housing is available to even be looked into. Cool beans! So I've expidited the process of switching to less but longer work days that I'd planned to go for come year's end anyway, and we're hoping to use those days to figure out how to not end up under a bridge somewhere. It's a fun situation, to be sure.

While I'm not one to panhandle, Kazzie's watchers brought up GoFundMe, and I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. If you feel like throwing us a one-time bone, you can catch that right here. (I feel obligated to mention our Patreon here less out of begging and more out of "yes I realize both of these things exist, albeit for different purposes," like a confession of artist's guilt, because apparently it's common for artsy farts to think they don't deserve jack diddly for what they do, never mind ask for aid besides.) If nothing else, it'll cushion the blow a bit; we've finally hit a point where we've more or less financially stabilized as opposed to rolling into debt, so we don't exactly have a huge stockpile of savings to address the matter since we're still gonna be paying off our assorted crap for quite a long while.

Lonely Hooves is getting a delay this week, and you can blame me for this one entirely. Between the housing stress, work schedule shifts, and general emotional wear and tear, I found myself staring down a two-page update that needed a fair amount of last-minute design work before it could even get going. Rather than willingly approach a true and ultimate meltdown, I decided to call it for the week and focus on making this moment as close to what I've been picturing for literal years as I could. I'm bummed to push our visitor reveal another week, but hopefully it'll be worthwhile in the end.

That said, there has been a ton of design work for these pages, between all the different iterations of our spooky intruders, laying out the area, working out the wagon, setting the general mood of the scene... I keep promising it'll end up on Patreon as we go, but it's such a cluttered lot that odds are I'll just mass post it in a couple months when it's not full of spoilers I'll need to edit out. That's the sort of thing I want Patrons to get in on, so I'm excited for it, but it's a big ol' mess! Maybe I'll slap the MP3 of this last page's little bonus up on there in the meantime. Iunno.

What I do know is that I'm facing down a four-day weekend, and despite the things I want to catch up on, I'd also love to have a sketch stream sometime. Thursday seems like a bit of a batty notion since a fair portion of you lot'll be experiencing a right old turkey coma, so I'm thinking Friday evening. I know I said the same last week, but between a general lack of interest on all channels and my own waning mental fortitude, I took a personal day instead. (I may have taken several. I'm dealing with some things.) I've no excuses this week, though, so keep your eyes your watch notices Friday night if you want to come shake off whatever your racist uncle screamed across the table or forget football is a thing for five minutes and maybe order a sketch while you're at it.

(On that, In the Bath House did all right, and there's been interest in this sort of thing but I'm not sure where I or even my general audience sits with it, but: I've been considering maybe having a potential NSFW slot for the end of the streams? It'd happen pretty late, like early AM, when the kiddies have generally gone to bed, but I'm not super confident I'm mentally ready to deal with whatever audience that might draw in and I've had less than stellar experience with it in the past, so I'm super on the fence about it. I know it's not why most of you are here, and I do try to consider that sort of thing as well. I'm open to input!)

That's about the gist of it. Thanks for your time, patience, support, all that good jazz, and if you decide to tune in Friday night (or any time this long weekend, I've a lot to work through and my family's doing Thanksgiving on Sunday for whatever reason) I'll see you there!

Second, in house-hunting, I'd recommend looking into buying rather than renting. For one thing, a lot of times a mortgage costs about the same (at least in my area) as renting. Also, it's a whole lot less likely anybody can kick you out (imminent domain???). There is the added bonus that you can sell it later if you need to move again. And there are no deposits or fees if you have to leave and things aren't "taken care of". Sometimes apartments can be nasty about that. On the other hoof, in owning you are responsible for everything... That's my thoughts and experience on that.

Don't fret about taking extra time with Lonely Hooves. You made the right call to take the time and let the muse speak through you the way you see it in your head. We will wait as patiently as possible!

GoFundMe is good, and you can also do commissions! Although, as you just said, you probably won't have time to do them quickly. However, you could offer to queue them up and work on them as you have time. Just put it out there as a "Pay to be on this commission list" and then that's one thing done. I know there's more to it than that, but you asked for input!

Finally, NSFW... All I can give you is my opinion on this, so take it or leave it. I don't watch you for that stuff, and especially if you're not comfortable with the crowd it might draw, I'd say don't do it. I'll refrain from getting all judgmental and slapping you with the Bible... That having been said, you probably could draw an audience that is more willing to commission you on that stuff, so it is something to consider. My final thought on that matter... if you're going to do it, keep it tasteful. Plus, a bonus on that, you can always reference classical (not specifically classical, but I mean well-known) art in your pieces. There's a ton of that stuff that would be considered NSFW.

Bah. You call that huge? Your post length does not even faze me, sir! Prepare for combat!

Owning seems a bit beyond us presently; ignoring all the bank applications and trying to find a place we're happy with in such a crunch time limit, we own zero appliances and that's a hefty cost to slap onto things as well, I'm terrible at taking care of things in the place we have, and Kazzie's ability to cover me there is pretty limited due to her back injury. Also, if we stay in the town we're in (which is sort of up in the air at the moment), the apartments we have cover the water bill, which here specifically is sort of absurd in cost (like routinely $100+ a month). I want to own at some point, but that's a lot to resolve with very little time or chance to do it (thus the adjustment in work schedule hopefully making things like that feasible going forward, at least.)

I'm technically always open for commissions, but also I still have a couple expression sheets to work through. I'm dreadfully slow at them! (Season change hasn't been helping. I'm trying to use the holiday to kickstart my motivation, because it's been very lacking, and I sorta feel terrible about how long these last couple are taking!) I'm hoping to do a sketch stream tonight (Friday) to keep that flow going before finally tackling these things, and that usually brings a couple bucks in at least.

My NSFW ambitions would probably begin and end in the pin-up department, barring some manner of head injury drastically changing my attitude on the matter. Keep it at least somewhat classy. If it ever did manage to go past that, it wouldn't be on this account, at the very least. The problem is, will people that sort of thing draws in settle with that? I hear horror stories about NSFW artists getting requests for some supremely weird shit and barring the ones who go for outright porn basically nobody is a fan of their comments sections devolving into what who wants to do with whatever you've drawn. I mean, I can hide that garbage, keep a clear stance on it... iunno.

Presently, comments on my one rare effort have been net positive without getting weird, barring one case on Skype that I basically walked into when a friend offered a "sexiness review," which was poor phrasing, to be blunt. Save that, it's served as a sort of weird outlet for dealing with how messed up the world feels to me right now, and the one who's opinion matters the most to me is actually the one who came up with the pose and setting for the thing. It was Kazzie's idea! Haha.

So I don't really mind doing them in general. A rare illustration here or there is fine, and for once people actually look at the thing I put my all into, because bewbs, so that's something.